Rue, Britannia?

From across the pond, today in the UK would seem to be a mix of Bastille Day and Independence Day without actually being either. At midnight tonight, GMT, Great Britain formally leaves the European Economic Union, EEU. 

What could happen and what will happen afterward for both the United Kingdom and the European community of nations it is leaving behind, may prove to be two very different and difficult realities. Or not.  

I always think of Great Britain as the nation which gave us (among so many other things) Shakespeare and The Beatles and I forget that it also gave us the Bay City Rollers. Soup is rarely eaten as hot as it's served and even less rarely successfully eaten with a fork. If ever there was a time for stiff upper lips, it is upon us now.  
-bill kenny

May Love Overcome and Justice Roll Down

It can be hard to remember: Every duck is a bird, but not every bird is a duck. 

In much the same way as every racist/misogynist/sexist is a Trump voter but not every Trump voter is a racist/misogynist/sexist. That's as close to being nice to Trump voters as I am going to get today, and every other day. 

I can't reason with them as they reject facts they don't agree with as 'fake news.' Christian  Evangelicals among them believe he was sent to America by God which makes sense, I suppose, if you also think that God has run out of locusts. They applaud the inane and inhumane stupid shit he says and does because they love that he "owns the libs."  

So I keep remembering: every duck is a bird but not every bird is a duck. Amen.
-bill kenny

Remembering Unlikely Heroes

The author Richard C. Crepeau once offered, “A hero shows us what we ought to be.” And we, in turn, regard people as heroes because we wish to be what they are. This Sunday afternoon at two at Taftville’s Peter Gallan American Legion Post 104 on Merchants Avenue is a ceremony honoring heroes who may have escaped your notice.

On February 3, 1943, at the height of World War II, the SS Dorchester, a converted cargo vessel pressed into duty and refitted as a troop transport ship was torpedoed in the early morning hours as the convoy of which it was a part was sailing from Newfoundland, Canada to a port in Southern Greenland.

The ship with 904 troops and civilian crew aboard sank bow first in about twenty minutes. The severe list as it sank prevented the launch of some of her lifeboats and subsequent overcrowding of the remaining lifeboats caused some of those that were launched to capsize, spilling their unfortunate passengers into cold North Atlantic waters barely above freezing.

Because of the ship’s sudden sinking, no distress signals were sent delaying the start of any rescue attempts. When help did arrive the following day, many who had survived the sinking were floating in their life-jackets, dead from hypothermia. Only 230 men were rescued. The Dorchester sinking was the largest loss of life of any American convoy during World War II.

Among those who died on board were four US army chaplains, who helped frightened soldiers board lifeboats, and gave up their own life-jackets when the supply ran out. The four, (Methodist minister, Reverend) George Fox, (Reform Rabbi) Alexander Goode, (Roman Catholic priest, Reverend) John Washington, and (Reformed Church in America minister, Reverend) Clark Poling then joined arms, offered prayers for the living and the dead, and sang hymns as the ship sank.

Their deaths serve as a courageous example for we the living, especially in times such as these defined by peril and challenges from within and without. Their example continues to this day to inspire. The ceremony on Sunday honors their lives and celebrates their selfless sacrifice.

Reverend Scott Schuett, Pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lebanon, Reverend Sara Ofner-Seals of the First Congregational Church in New London, Rabbi Julius Rabinowitz, Rabbi of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Norwich, and Reverend Phil Salois, Retired Army Catholic Chaplain, and now Chaplain with the American Legion, each representing the faith of one of the original chaplains will deliver a benediction, representing the final moments aboard Dorchester. Reverend Sara Ofner-Seals of the First Congregational Church in New London, will be the keynote speaker.

I’ve been fortunate to attend the ceremony in years past and it is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, The post hall is very small and that enforced intimacy I believe helps me better appreciate the lessons learned about lives truly lived with grace under pressure with courage and caring for others that I fear sometimes gets lost in our day-to-day lives.

Despite the size of the venue, there’s always room for one more person and it would be altogether fitting if that person were you.

-bill kenny

Did You See Him in the River?

As we were driving back recently from a shopping outing, my wife, Sigrid, looking out the passenger window at the grey landscape blending seamlessly into a grey horizon where, somewhere overhead it met an equally grey sky, and offered a single word in her native tongue, German, to describe another late January day, trostlos-hopeless.

This is the toughest time of year for a lot of us, to include folks like me who stare out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of what's next. A number of years ago someone took me on a short helicopter flyover of some of the woodlands and farmlands in this area of Connecticut in the early winter, and the view from the top seemed to be of another world at times.

I can recall seeing rock walls everywhere we went (and you can see a lot of them from the roadways, but there are many, many more as it turns out), through the forests and brook beds, intersecting at angles and wondering how odd that must have seemed to the indigenous peoples here when European settlers first arrived. 

In comparison, the European landmass was the smallest of the continents, and maybe that's where the assertiveness (if not out and out aggressiveness of its natives) developed as they went out into the big world and marked their territory not only to use but, at times, to use up.

I drive through lands demarcated by ancient stone walls every day as I travel through the Real World, and none of the creatures I encounter in my travels or travails regard them as immutable boundaries or barriers. They are there and nothing more. 

I can only imagine for a Mohegan or a Pequot, thinking of the tribes in this region of Connecticut, watching an early settler struggle to subjugate the earth to sow and harvest farm crops, engaged in back-breaking labor to maneuver the giant stones they unearthed while tilling, to serve as property markers was too amusing to not smile.

And it's taken us centuries to learn lessons of harmonious, not rapacious, living within a natural order. Reuse and recycle from plunder and leave and to work very hard to not spend too much time calculating what has been lost from lessons we've left unlearned for too long. Broken Arrow.
-bill kenny

Saying "Never Again" Is Not Enough

Today isn't just the last Monday of the first month of the first year of the third decade of the twenty-first century, though it is most certainly ALL of that. 

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the Soviet Red Army as Hitler's Nazi Germany and its delusions of Aryan supremacy were hammered into oblivion and smashed to bits.

But the liberation of Auschwitz and all the other death factories did not happen before the Nazi network of work camps for those deemed undesirable to include (but not limited to) Jews, gypsies, persons with physical and mental disabilities, Poles, Russians, as well as communists, socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals, estimated to exceed twenty million people, had been murdered.

Everyone's shadow is the same color, everywhere and always but too often we choose to forget that. Making "Never Again" a reality takes all of us every day.

-bill kenny

Man Proposes

"God is freedom, God is truth.

God is power, and God is proof.

God is fashion, God is fame.

God gives meaning, God gives pain."

"I'm not the same as you

Cos I've seen the light and I'm gaining in height now.

I got a halo 'round me, I got a halo 'round me

I got a halo 'round my head."

-bill kenny

Just Above the Police Calls

Our president covered himself in glory, seemingly, in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this week with a 'never mind the environment, here's the next installment of the Industrial Age' barn-burner of a speech that seemingly impressed just about no one but himself. Again. 

Yeah, I could have linked you to a transcript of his remarks but to capture the full-on dotard effect I think you actually have to listen to him as the half-formed ideas combine with random utterances on their way out of his piehole in a vain effort to form words. And because I can, here's how a young adult, Greta Thunberg, used her time at Davos. 

Seriously. We've got a guy who insists windmills cause cancer while rejecting climate crisis and sees bigger and brighter days ahead for fossil fuels. He tends to denigrate Thunberg and so many others like her both for her concern and her efforts but is quite happy to leave whatever clean-up can be accomplished of what's left of our planet to her and her generation because he and his just don't care.

Suspect Florida's newest, and most certainly most orange, resident may start to change his tune about the impacts, long and short-term, of climate change if/when instead of raining pennies from heaven, something else ends up scaring the hail out of him. Like this. 

Unlike Sharpie-Gate, the Mango Mussolini and his minions might finally start to believe in something other than the infallibility and intellectual superiority of Cadet Bone Spurs, unless they choose to blame the falling iguanas on yet another caravan of invading immigrants, though those only seem to show up (on Fox News) when we're within five months of an election.

I buy the product but never use it. Stay tuned.
-bill kenny

Photographs and Memories

I'm forever impressed with how nothing posted online, no matter how obscure or minuscule, is ever really lost. When the Sisters of Charity spoke to us squirts about immortality back in Saint Peter's (sic) Grammar School, I'm sure this was not what they meant. 

But I guess we don't get to define what is and what is not forever, we just learn to live with the consequences of someone else's choices. At the time I wrote this, I called it: 

Greetings from I. G. Farben

It's not called that anymore-it wasn't even called that when I worked in it decades ago. Then it was called the Creighton W. Abrams Building and was known as the US Army's V Corps Headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, FRG. The FRG, Federal Republic of Germany, was Diplo-speak for West Germany; East Germany, the bad guys, were called the DDR, Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

It was a massive building and rumor had it that frightening chemical weapons had been developed in the annex behind the main building during the war. Another rumor had it that Frankfurt am Main was nearly totally destroyed during World War II except for the area where I. G. Farben had their massive corporate headquarters which is why Ike set up shop there. 

He and Mamie were gone by the time I got there, as was Checkers and his owner, too, though I once wore a cloth coat to a cat rodeo. I do know there was a great place around the corner to get kiwi and strawberry ice cream, so delicious it practically ate itself while you watched.

I was working in a video production facility that everyone liked, as an abstraction, but in terms of manning and funding, no one was too crazy about us. It's not that we weren't nice people or didn't deliver great products-we just cost lots of money. Armored vehicles were going for tens of millions of dollars, this was during the Cold War, remember, (a Gift Store?) and we were squared off against Ivan and his toady lackeys (our toadies were, of course, our friends and allies) and whoever blinked first laughed last. 

Or something. I forget. It was a long time ago. Anyway, we had LOTS of tanks. Video cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars and we had trouble getting money from the guys with all the tanks to buy us even one.

I thought about that yesterday when a fluorescent bulb in the fixture overhead "burned out". I remembered Ron H, one of our engineers, and his running buddy, George. George was from Samoa and was the most easy-going person I've ever seen, even when provoked by Ron. 

Ron was crazy; brilliant, but crazy. He and his wife had two very young boys, Brenden and LB. And if you guessed that LB was short for Little Brother, then, perhaps you met Ron because that's what the youngest one's name was and that's what the initials stood for.

Ron, as the chief engineer, saw his job as repairing the video field production equipment we took on our travels to accomplish our jobs and broke. He skipped over almost all of that and cut directly to 'broke'. And he was right. We did inordinate amounts of damage to production equipment as it got run over by any number of tracked vehicles moving at high speeds across unforgiving terrain. 

When dropped from helicopters, it did not bounce, it splattered. Rain cases were not, as hoped, waterproof shock-mounted protection and so it went, one disappointment after another. And Ron and George repaired everything, even if we didn't come back with all the parts we started out with. 

There was a day we compensated by returning with part of a German motion picture camera, a very expensive motion picture camera, that was, alas, utterly worthless to us and anyone else. Ron and George did more with less than any two people since Adam & Eve.

But I thought of Ron because of the "burned out" light. Ron used to explain to the most junior of the field cameraman the differences in methods of illumination, a topic not really touched on in the Television Production Handbook by Herbert Zettl, the video equivalent of every Sacred Text of every major, and most of the minor, religions. Something not covered in Zettl? The little ones would lean forward and listen closely, and Uncle Ron didn't disappoint.

Incandescent light, he'd explain as if this were merely a review because (yawn) all of us knew this already (or so his tone of voice would suggest), illuminates by driving the darkness out of a defined space. He noted that late at night when you turned the nightstand light on, it always seemed even brighter than during the day because late night was much darker. Heads would slowly nod and the sound of young fish flopping on the dock, hooks still in mouths, would begin to be heard.

Florescent light, he pointed out, worked in the exact opposite way; it absorbed darkness and left only light. There would an occasional askance look-Ron would continue unperturbed because he was already to his clincher. How many of you, he'd ask, have ever removed a "burned out" (air quotes every time) florescent? 

All hands went up. And did you notice, he'd ask, how there was what looked like black very close to where the metal gap met the glass fixture at the two ends? Again, all heads nodded furiously. That, he explained, is because the florescent is full and can hold no more darkness and the leftovers are seeping out.

He'd allow that to linger for the briefest of moments before adding he could understand how some might be tempted to doubt him but, submitted for their approval, he'd ask, have you ever thrown a "burned out" florescent light into a metal dumpster? 

Of course, all of us had done this countless times. The next time you do it, he said, open the little door on the side of the dumpster and take a look in there--it's as black as a coal mine. Why? Because (of course!) throwing the glass florescent into the metal dumpster broke the glass, releasing all the stored up darkness the bulb had been sucking out of rooms for years, scattering it around the dumpster.

I do not recall Ron ever finding the time, or the opportunity, to correct the information he'd shared with the best and brightest videographers the US Army could send to Western Europe as we avoided, but documented nevertheless for all posterity, the deadly embrace of the Russian Bear. I'm pretty sure all we learned was to beware of darkness, and with good reason.
-bill kenny

Difference Between Yuuge and Hughes

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

- Langston Hughes, 1936

-bill kenny, 2020

It's Just about a Decade

It was almost exactly ten years ago, on 27 January 2010, these mangled musings started to show up in the printed pages of The Bulletin, originally on the editorial page. When I read them now, I'm disappointed because I don't sound prescient or taller, though the hallway mirror suggests I'm a lot greyer and rounder. 

I'm not the wide-eyed optimist I once was and have ruefully conceded being a pessimist means you can only be surprised but never disappointed. Mainly I was struck by how little so much and nearly everyone seems to have changed, though I'm hoping you're already thinking of points of light which prove me wrong (and there are many with more coming). 

Here's how I saw us a decade ago, with some updates:

"Is this the year we start to finally change Norwich back into a place where our adult children will want to come home to, or from which all who have the wherewithal to leave, will flee with a haste that borders on the unseemly as a retreat becomes a rout? 

"Pardon an outsider’s observation, but too often we don’t know how we got here, and, more importantly, are unwilling to work together to get to where we want to go. We need to stop waiting for Hartford, which is politically and financially exhausted, or for Washington, D. C., which is too far away, and even more broken with too many of its own problems, to ‘save’ us. 

"And we need to finally wake up from the recurring dream we have of finding that one big development project that will transform the three rivers upon which Norwich was founded into flowing honey and the falling raindrops (and snowflakes) into gumdrops.

"The only help we can count on, and should, is the assistance we give to ourselves. If we're looking for a helping hand, look no further than the end of each of your arms; that's two and that's a start. If you join hands with those of your neighbor, we have an initiative--and if three of us work together, it’s a movement. 

"Every person, every building, every block and every neighborhood, one community. We've seen what working to benefit only ourselves has gotten us--a society of sharpened elbows and people not afraid to use them. Many have stopped trying and so we have to pick them up as we take ourselves along to where we need to get to in order to rebuild and rediscover the spark in the dark that made us who we are.”

The falling apart didn’t happen overnight though too many of us seem to have forgotten that and a lot more work and considerably less talk (and column writing) will be needed to continue the rebuilding and redefinition of Norwich. 

“And the work will not be easy because it’s not ever easy, and it's not instant, but we're not in this life or nation, or circumstance, alone. And we can do this, because, when you get through with all the platitudes, we have no choice. You're burning daylight, sitting here reading this, my friend. The dogs bark but the caravan moves on."

-bill kenny

On the Periphery of Perdition

Sorry to be so cynical on a very historic Tuesday, at least it should be for supporters of the most incompetent and corrupt human being to ever hold the office of the President of the United States, the Orange Adulterer, Mister Tangerine Man, the Mango Mussolini, Pantload45, Donald J (for Genius) Trump. 

Don the Con has been this guy his entire life but it's only now as the spotlight hits him in his most recent role as Most Powerful Man in the World, that all the flaky shit he's been at since he took his daddy's money four or so decades ago and built a house of cards on real estate deals financed with OPM (Other People's Money), that so many get to see him as he truly is.

He's a whiner, a crybaby, a self-entitled piece of human excrement covered in skin who attracts deviants, grafters and grifters in much the manner that dog shit attracts flies. No matter how much he insists his phone call was perfect, it wasn't. He has elevated kakistocracy to an art form and we cannot be rid of him fast enough or too soon.

For those who continue to support him and who will, after the Senate has voted along party lines to NOT convict him, continue to insist he was innocent, you're wrong. He will always be stained with impeachment because he's a defective human being. 

And if you believe, like so many I encounter on social media, that "God sent Trump to America," it could only be because the Lord was out of locusts.
-bill kenny   

We Must Learn to Live as Brothers

Today is a federal holiday, the observance of the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Schools and government operations are closed as communities across the country join hands and hearts if only for a moment, to celebrate his life and to consider our progress as a nation in our ongoing journey for equal rights.

We're not there. Yet. But we're closer today than we were yesterday and tomorrow we'll be farther still. That's really our pilgrims' progress (pun intended). Norwich has always been a city of doers, with a rich ethnic diversity for earliest days as waves of immigrants took their turns, so to speak, in the mills and factories built along the banks of the three rivers which helped define the city's boundaries and character.

Thamesville, Taftville, and Greeneville together with Bean Hill, Laurel Hill and the farmlands to the east and northwest of the city all offered opportunities to newcomers and established settlers alike and Norwich thrived because of who we were and what we made of ourselves in the moments we claimed for our own. It wasn't the first time, I suspect, that we realized we had more in common than those individual difference that separated us one from the other. It's a history and a heritage we would do well to remember today as we honor the 91st birthday of Dr. King.

As a child of the sixties, who came of age when Dr. King preached and taught and shaped every discussion about equal rights and human rights, believing as he did that one was always the other, I was often speechless at the depth of his belief and eloquence of his vision that resisted the existence and pervasiveness of poverty and despair that was destroying this country. Reinventing American society so that his children together with mine and yours would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is a part of the legacy of  Dr. King's life and a part of our nation's history.

So, when you can today, I hope you'll make time to take part in the ceremonies and commemorations celebrating him wherever that may be. I hope this year we can seize the moment to celebrate the dream of Dr. King and make it our own.  And then, every day for all the days that remain, use its promise to change the world. Again.
-bill kenny 

Above Us Only Sky

A cynical co-worker from long ago once told me we should strive to discover a way to harness stupidity as an energy source since its supply is unlimited. Sounded a little science fiction to me at the time, but a quick review of history suggests he might have been closer to the truth than even he had guessed. 

Something about the vastness of space seems to inspire Republicans to insipid heights of buffoonery. Ronald  Reagan, I'm assuming fresh from binge-watching the Star Wars movies, offered a space-based defensive shield to America's allies, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Countering the black hole of space, Reagan's proposal created a financial black hole that repeatedly failed to work even when pitted against soft-ball 'tests' that were anything but. 

Fast forward almost four decades and another Republican President, this time one who has NO use for any American allies and who makes Reagan look like the second coming of Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, hasn't just proposed another variant of Deep Space Nine but has established the Air Force's answer to the Marine Corps, Space Force (I always read that with echo on).  

So far all Cadet Tiny Hands really has to show for the Space Force are its uniforms, and the reaction to them makes me, for one, yearn for the return of the good old days of the SDI. On the upside, I should point out that it appears we can start exporting stupidity and really start to cash in.
-bill kenny 

Finally!

Spring training cannot get here soon enough (and in light of the ever-expanding ripples in the pond from the Astros' sign-stealing, perhaps it had better accelerate a skosh). 

If you thought or feared I was going to pick up where I left off yesterday, in mid-screed at the cheaters within the ranks of the Lords of Baseball, you may be pleasantly surprised when I assure you I'm not. 

At least not today. 

Today, I want to say 'bravo!' to Gabe Kapler, newly-hired skipper of the San Francisco Giants and to Alyssa Nakken.  No, it doesn't make my weather here in Connecticut any less wintry and does nothing to move the start of spring training up. 

"Merit and the ability to be a great coach trumps all." 
Baseball is moving in the right direction, finally.
-bill kenny

My Sermon on the Mound

Let's start here and hope I get very distracted very quickly. 

Herbert Hoover once said, "baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other institution." I'm glad he wasn't around this week. Baseball is my very favorite sport in the world (Deutsche Fussball Bund, shau wo anders) and as ill as the Performance Enhancing Drugs scandal of a decade ago made me, this week is worse, far worse.

When this kind of stuff happens in the Olympics athletes, teams, and their countries are STRIPPED of their medals. So what about Major League Baseball? Do I think we give a World Series Trophy or pennant and rings to the Los Angeles Dodgers who, it could be argued suffered the most damage at the hands of the Red Sox and the Astros? No (mainly because I hate the Dodgers) and not because of that old chestnut 'everyone does it.'

EVEN if that were true, so what? That still would not make cheating okay. Nope, there should be no trophies for the Astros or the Red Sox (and fuqq you, John Henry and Sean Kennedy individually and collectively)) just holes in the display cases and no jewelry for fingers either. Donate the money all that stuff cost to someone like Doctors Without Borders, International Refugee Committee or Puerto Rican Earthquake Relief.

And spare me punishing just the managers and general managers who 'should have known' or 'could have known' and start stringing up the players who were involved in this stuff (and not just former-Astro Carlos Beltran), just beneath those Divisional and League Champion pennants the teams have at their stadia (those trash can lids didn't bang themselves, did they?), who did know but cheated anyway because rules are for people who don't know any better or something. 

And finally, make the Astros and Red Sox forfeit all their games through the All-Star break (my apologies to their fans for that punishment) and then make them play the rest of the season's home schedule for free admission. Now go forth and sin no more.
-bill kenny

Hard To Be an Only Child

I once read when you are a young child in a family with older children your growing up seems to be like having had too much to drink. Everyone else remembers all of your awkward and embarrassing moments better than you. As the oldest in a rather large family, I've never had that problem.

Let me demonstrate (and this will work a LOT better if you know any of my brothers or sisters). Today is our sister Jill's birthday. She is the youngest of my three younger sisters though it's possible (and I say only possible) she regards her older two sisters as drafts. Just sayin'.

Two words: goody bags. My lips are sealed, but my seals have lips. Enough.

Happy birthday, Jill. With many, many more to follow.
-bill

One Man Come and Go

Today would have been the 91^st birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We’ll observe the federal holiday honoring him  this coming Monday as both a celebration of the man's life but also a call to work even harder for the goals he wanted for all of us.

For those fortunate enough to have Monday free, I think sometimes the day off distracts us from the importance of being actively engaged in a day on, not just for King’s birthday whenever you observe it but every day until the goal of equal rights for anyone is transformed into the reality of equal rights for everyone.

As you may have just guessed from the previous sentence, I don’t think we’re there. Yet.

We’ve come a long way in many respects a large number of experts say, but here on the ground, I think we can all agree there are miles to go before we can sleep. But please don’t allow the distance we’ve yet to travel discourage you in any way from celebrating the success of the journey we are already undertaking.  

And if you think that sounded a little bit like a pep talk, well maybe it is but let me also point out if you’re waiting/hoping/longing for a leader like Dr. King to take us the rest of the way, it might be time to stop looking at the horizon for a drummer and instead, look in the mirror at yourself for the reflection of his dream.

There are events marking his birthday to include the Norwich Branch of the NAACP and Norwich Free Academy hosting a celebratory luncheon whose theme this year is "Standing on the Legacy of Freedom” this Friday in the Sidney Frank Center Ensemble Room, which, as it has for the previous thirty-four years, will honor outstanding achievers from throughout our state and community.

Monday on the federal holiday across the country there will be, of course, ceremonies and commemorations. Ours traditionally centers on the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard at Norwich City Hall with some speeches and preaching (some of us are in more need of prayer than we let on) on what has been, to my memory, historically a typical New England winter's day and then we all go back to the lives we lead and the people we are.

But after the speeches, the newspaper editorials and all the gestures, sincere as they will all be, why not make the day count for the victims of the recent earthquakes in Puerto Rico?

This is not the time to wring our hands in sorrow or clench our fists in anger that so much sadness has come again to one island and its people, our countrymen. Don’t hesitate because you think there’s too much to do, but rather so that we can help those who need help.

The Miami Herald has a great article about the agencies involved in assisting and how we can be a part of it. And what better time to do that than here and now, as we honor the life and work of Dr. King? 

-bill kenny

Getting Caught Up in the Light

I have always loved being a dad, despite the egregious lack of credentials and absence of any semblance of requisite skills. Thanks to modern technology, Sigrid and I knew enormous amounts about our children long before either of them were born (so far in advance, I, of the short attention span, sometimes lose track of their actual dates of birth). 

Patrick and Michelle were our children well before either of them was a person. As adults now in their own right, they have to struggle with a father who 'knows' they are grown-ups, but who has decided that is true in another world, though not his.

True to form, I was much more comfortable when our children were younger. I had a tough time winning over either Patrick or Michelle when they were infants since it was hard to successfully show them how smart I seemed, possibly because I wasn't. At their age, they had no basis for comparison so it should have been really easy and when it wasn't, I should have drawn some conclusions. Except I've always been bad at art, as well as Paul. It was attractive being one of the two grown-ups in the house with all the answers, even though in my case I married a grown-up with all the answers instead of being one.

There were the days of learning to tie shoes, learning to ride bikes, and learning to drive cars as well as helping with the medical emergencies of pinched fingers, sprained ankles, and skinned knees. I was never good at matters of the heart--those have always seemed to be the easiest to break and the hardest to heal. For a guy who talks a lot, I've never known what to say especially when the mantra of 'everything will be alright' is revealed so often to be a shining lie.

I used to suggest to our children when the hurt got worse and the heart got harder that there was a reason why things had worked out the way they had(n't). But we all saw that as a ridiculously tall tale from a preposterously short man. 

I'm in that neighborhood again now-knowing nothing I can say will repair, replace or revive what once was but is now no more. I can hope and I can hover but I can't fix and that's what needed. "Laughing in the open air, have yourself another dream...only the young can break away." Or feel the pain when all the laughter turns to tears.
-bill kenny

The Wheel Breaks the Butterfly

There are times I am starting to feel like maybe I've been alive a little too long. I live in a house most of whose technology is well beyond my comprehension and I'm grateful we have techno-savvy children, but most especially that our daughter lives nearby, to help me out on everything from setting up Amazon Prime on the television to how Google Home can make my life easier, assuming I ever learn how to use it. (I'd almost forgotten about that blue dress ). 

I'm from the middle of the last century and have been showing signs of wear for quite some time as this one has progressed, often dragging me along in its wake. Don't be mistaken; I'm very happy to be here especially since the alternative and its inevitability grows more certain and frightening by the day, but I've long since lost my sense of comfort with much if not most of what we say and do with and to one another.

Big things, like the Global War on Terrorism that we've since shortened to just war; affordable medical care for all those who need it; equal rights for everyone meaning equal rights for anyone; disagreeing without being disagreeable, and most recently, yet again, my right to NOT KNOW things exceeding anyone else's right to tell me.

What do I mean, exactly and specifically? 
Ask Gywneth Paltrow and then tell me why no one asked Chris Martin. 
-bill kenny

You Cannot Make this Stuff Up

Sitting here in Connecticut braced for the worst of a winter that I fear is still to come, I warm up what passes for my heart by tracking the days until Spring Training begins. 

Between us, I have no illusions of a cause and effect in any of that. I don't expect the temperatures to skyrocket as the countdown approaches zero (though it would be nice if that happened). I'm a big kid and I understand how weather works whether I like it or not, but I enjoy having something to look forward to. 

I love the idea of spring training not that I have any delusions of participating as a player even though I love baseball and was a pretty fine right-handed pitcher on my prep school team back in the day (sort of like being the tallest of the Seven Dwarves) because it's nice to have that as a dream or to have any dream at all. 

I didn't endear myself to many co-workers while a member of the workforce when they'd lament (a/k/a whine) about obstacles that stood between them and whatever it was they were striving for (for which they were mostly unsuited and the only one failing to see that were themselves). 

I'd extend pseudo sympathy by assuring them I could feel their pain because 'if my mom had married a Kennedy, I'd be living in the White House. But she didn't, so I'm not and that's why I never send her a card on Mother's Day.' Rarely did the flicker of comprehension shine in their eyes.

However, in terms of an actual Confederacy of Dunces (capital letters for a reason; click the link and enjoy) meets the Illuminati and the Deep State, my cap is off to Garrison Lassiter (and you can guess the team affiliation on my cap I suspect). 

It might be time, buddy, to hit the snooze button.
-bill kenny

And You Thought Billy Bass Had Talents?

Even then Shakespeare had the right idea, I suppose.

Though just how many more things, Horatio, is still open to interpretation. 

Such as, for example, do cuttlefish see in three dimensions? I'll admit, NOT a question that has kept me up at night, but that's because Trevor Wardill has been clocking some long hours on behalf of all of us. But he does have some answers, making the total number of things a little more manageable, I guess.

Up next, do praying mantises rock 3D glasses or what? Your Honor, asked and answered.
-bill kenny